Order a Raspberry pi

The raspberry pi was ordered at 23th of August and it arrived in the Netherlands at 11th of September. So that’s less then the 3 weeks that element14 mentions on the website. A fast SD card is recommended. So I have bought an 8GB Transcend class 10 card (for only 8 euro’s).

As programmer you should have an HDMI cable available and network connection and micro-usb power supply.

Make a HTPC from your Raspberry

In 2003 there was a project started to make an Xbox act as HTPC. This project was named XBMC (X-Box Media Center). The software is still available for the X-Box, but also for various number of other platforms.

As you might know, you can install various Linux distributions on your raspberry. A lot of them are listed on the official raspberry pi website. There is even a special distro for XBMC on your Raspberry pi called RaspBmc. It is super easy to install (when you run windows). Insert your (fast) SD card and download the Windows RaspBmc installer. Unzip and hit install. When you are done, put the SD in your pi and connect the LAN, HDMI and power up! It might take a while, so grab some coffee. If if fails downloading the updates, remove the power and try again after a few seconds. It should look like this after 30 minutes: